Let me tell you about a note I 🔥FIRED OFF☄️ last week… now that my blood pressure has dropped. Period Products belong in the bathroom, where they are needed.
It was in response to a typical REQUEST FOR SOMEONE LOOKING FOR DONATIONS OF MENSTRUAL PRODUCTS for students in a district where there is some level of poverty. But THIS NOTE 📝 came from someone who told me, as a p.s., that they were a Board of Education member. They also let me know that students were not receiving free menstrual products, and that they came out of the nurse’s budget.
Oh, where to start? 🤷🏻♀️
🔴SOMEONE pays for the products. They should be FREE FOR STUDENTS, but there is no tampon tree where you can just get them at no cost.
🔴That someone MUST BE the boards of education charged with… well, educating students. In the SAME WAY TOILET PAPER AND SOAP play into the PEDAGOGICAL MISSION of a school, in that they allow students to easily manage natural bodily functions, menstrual products must also be provided.
🔴The nurse’s budget is part of the school budget, it’s just that the nurse decided to buy pads and tampons with part of the money allocated because he/she recognizes their necessity. Why would schools want nurses to buy fewer medical supplies to accommodate what should be supplied like toilet paper (probably in the “facilities” budget)?
🔴The nurse’s office is no place to store menstrual products. Unless that’s where you keep the toilet paper and soap. PUT THE PRODUCTS IN THE BATHROOM. 🧻🧼🩸
→We need to do more to encourage, no insist, that school boards address the equity and health issues of not providing FREE MENSTRUAL PRODUCTS IN SCHOOLS.
→We know that one in five girls has missed school due to lack of access to period products, and one in four struggles to afford them.*
→Students who cannot easily manage their periods have lower self-esteem and are less likely to be involved in activities.
→Not providing products that are as necessary as toilet paper, but only used by half the student body, tells that half that their success and attendance are not important, that they are not valued.
We love what we do at Girls Helping Girls. Period. And we are so grateful to help pick up the slack when budgets run short, to support people on school breaks, and to make products available to struggling families. But it should never be our responsibility to cover for the failures of local school boards.